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I 'AMERICA AND 
GERMANY 



CHARLES W. WENDTE, D.D. 



I 

AMERICA AND 
GERMANY 

THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 



BY 



CHARLES W. WENDTE, D. D. 



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BOSTON 

25 BEACON STREET 

1910 



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TO MY DEAR GERMAN MOTHER 

MADAME JOHANNA WENDTE 

FOR MANY YEARS IN BOSTON A TEACHER OF THE 
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF HER NATIVE COUNTRY 

numbering among the pupils who honored her 
with their appreciation and friendship the Rev. 
Theodore Parker, Mrs. EUza Buckminster Lee, 
Rev. Charles T. Brooks, Miss Ellen Frothingham, 
Miss Hannah Stevenson, Frank B. Sanborn, Mr. 
and Mrs. F. H. Peabody, the Misses Ticknor, 
Howe, Prescott, Choate, Lowell, Lawrence, 
Welch, Putnam, Bowditch, Hovey and others 

THIS LITTLE TREATISE IS DEDICATED ON THE 
ATTAINMENT OF HER NINETIETH BIRTHDAY, 
BY HER AFFECTIONATE AND GRATEFUL SON. 



America and Germany 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 



It was in the opening years of the 19th cen- 
tury that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said to 
his friend the Counsellor von Mueller, "Ger- 
many is nothing, but every individual German 
is much, and yet the Germans mistakenly 
imagine the reverse. The German people must 
be transplanted over the face of the whole 
earth, like the ancient Jews, in order to fully 
develop the good that is in them for the salva- 
tion of the nations." 

So contemptuously thought the greatest mind 
Germany has ever produced of the political 
aspirations of his countrymen! 

What a suggestive commentary on his opinion 
is afforded by the spectacle which greets us to- 
day in that marvel of modern politics the new 



2 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

German Empire, whose institution dates back 
less than forty years. 

The youngest born of the sisterhood of great 
European states the German Empire has taken 
her place among them with a conscious dignity 
and prestige justified by her military, industrial 
and political importance. 

With a domain of over 200,000 square miles, 
the population of Germany, in spite of heavy 
emigration, has increased by over 15 millions 
in the last 35 years, and now numbers nearly 
70 millions, making Germany second only to 
Russia in point of numbers in Europe. Her 
great cities have doubled and trebled in popula- 
tion in the same interval of time. Berlin, with 
over two million inhabitants boasts a more rapid 
growth than Chicago. Hamburg, the chief sea- 
port of the Empire, with 1,000,000 population, 
is larger than Boston. Its docks and commer- 
cial facilities are incomparably finer, while its 
ocean-trade is only excelled in Europe by Lon- 
don and Liverpool. In the same period the 
volume of Germany's exports has doubled, the 
bulk of its sea-going commerce twice doubled, 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 3 

and the tonnage of its steamships multiplied by 
ten. The increase in national wealth during 
the two decades between 1884- 1904 is put by 
the colonial Secretary, Herr Dernburg, at 30,- 
000 million marks, or 7,500 million dollars. 
The volume of trade (exports and imports) in 
1908 was 15^ milliards of marks, as against 12^ 
milliards by the United States, and 21 milliards 
by Great Britain. Gerrnany is undoubtedly soon 
to be the wealthiest nation in Europe. 

The industrial expansion of the Empire has 
been even more remarkable. Aided by an un- 
surpassed system of industrial and technical 
education Germany is rapidly becoming the 
leading manufacturing and commercial nation 
of the world. Her superiority in the chemical 
and electrical industries is already acknowl- 
edged. But she aspires to attain an equal 
supremacy in every other department of me- 
chanical production, and to make her familiar 
trade-mark "Made in Germany" the guarantee 
of superiority in workmanship and success in 
competition. Already she is crowding, if not 
distancing England, as well as our own country, 



4 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

in the markets of the world, and has in reaHty 
but one rival to fear in the race for commercial 
supremacy, namely, the United States. 

Undertaking great works of internal improve- 
ment like the railroad tunnel under the St. 
Gothard Alp, and the North Sea, and Rhine- 
Danube canals, with a public administration, 
both national and civic, unequalled for honesty, 
economy and efficiency; an army which is gen- 
erally admitted to be the most perfectly equipp- 
ed, disciplined and officered in Europe, and 
more recently also a navy which, second in 
formidableness only to that of Great Britain, is 
creating apprehension in the heart of that cent- 
ury-long mistress of the seas; rich in mineral 
and agricultural wealth; with still greater re- 
sources of muscle, brain and morale; pre-emi- 
nent amongst the nations of our time in education 
and science, in literature and artistic activity — 
such is the Germany of our day! Such is this 
baby-giant whose nursery-cap was the spiked 
helmet, whose strengthening syrups were pow- 
der andfiron, its infant playthings the sword and 
needle-gun, but which is rapidly graduating 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 5 

from the rough school of war to devote itself 
more and more to those peaceful pursuits and 
altruistic services to mankind to which its 
maturer life is to be dedicated. For though 
General Moltke's word come true, and Ger- 
many must guard with the sword for a century 
the rights and privileges she won by brilliant 
military campaigns in a few weeks or months, 
yet the genius of the German people is for 
peace, not war. Their true mission to man- 
kind is not one of menace and exploitation, but 
of amity and co-operation in the high task of 
enlightening, upbuilding and civilizing the 
world. 

This is testified to by two thousand years of 
German history, by the exigencies of their 
political situation, and the natural mildness, fair- 
ness and phlegmatism of the German character. 
It was with truthfulness that the present Ger- 
man emperor declared a few years since that 
during his reign he had been chiefly concerned 
to preserve peace between the empire and its 
sister states of Europe. "War-Lord" as he is 
prone to call himself, it will be his great distinc- 



6 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

tion in history that, despite its formidable arma- 
ment, no war has been waged by Germany 
during the 40 years which have elapsed since 
the Franco-Prussian Campaign. Can we say as 
much of England or our own country ? 

The legitimate ambition of Germany is to 
become a united, self-reliant and prosperous 
nation, the greatest manufacturing country in 
Europe, the leader in international commerce, 
the richest, most highly educated and contented 
of peoples, and a dominant influence for civili- 
zation and fraternity in the world. Now these 
honorable aims of a high-minded people de- 
mand as the first condition of their realization 
a long period of peaceful development. The 
only excuse for Germany's huge standing army 
and navy is the defence they afford her domestic 
industries and national institutions. Unlike 
Great Britain and the United States, whose 
fortunate isolation from hostile neighbors makes 
large military armaments unnecessary, Ger- 
many is surrounded on every side by powerful 
and jealous nations of different race, speech 
and religion, and is incessantly subject to their 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 7 

resentment and hatred and exposed to their 
attacks. Under such circumstances, and until 
happily, the era of a general disarmament and 
peaceful arbitration of national differences shall 
dawn upon the world, a large standing army 
would seem to be imperative for Germany. It 
is not necessary for my purpose to dwell upon 
the better aspects of this militarism, and to 
enumerate the various advantages which accrue 
to Germany from its discipline and service. 
These may all be granted, and yet the affirma- 
tion truthfully made that, notwithstanding all 
that can be said of its necessity and its compen- 
sation, the German army and navy are a terrible 
economic burden and moral evil, a hindrance 
to the higher welfare of the nation, a menace to 
its political freedom, and ever threaten to em- 
broil Germany in her relations with the other 
nations of the earth. To become the greatest 
manufacturing country in Europe, to live on 
good terms with other nations, especially with 
France and Russia, to engage in honorable 
commercial rivalry with England, Japan and 
the United States, to extend the sphere of Ger- 



8 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

man influence in China, South America, Turkey, 
Asia Minor and Africa — all this demands, first 
of all, a continuance of the policy of peace and 
comity with the nations of the world. 

Even more essential is this policy to the 
internal development of the German Empire. 
The unification of the latter is, after all, more 
external and sentimental than real. Germany 
remains, as yet, a very heterogeneous political 
conception. The elimination of certain minor 
members of its former loose aggregation of 
states, as a result of the Prussian-Austrian war 
of 1866, has still left Germany after the lapse 
of half a century an imperfectly amalgamated 
federation of twenty-six sovereign and inde- 
pendent states. It still has its minor Saxon 
duchies, its elder and junior branches of the 
illustrious family of Reuss, its Waldeck and 
Lippe, and other petty principalities. The 
imperial administration has to contend with a 
deal of particularist feeling and jealousy, 
especially in Bavaria. To these elements of 
weakness may be added the open disloyalty of 
such undigested elements as the Poles and 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 9 

Alsatians, and the great religious division be- 
tween the three-fifths of Protestants and two- 
fifths Roman Catholics in the Empire which so 
unfortunately disturbs the councils and arrests 
the unification of the nation. A matter of 
even graver concern is the growing power and 
menace to its present institutions of the Social 
Democrats, in whose demands are uttered the 
increasing consciousness of the plain people of 
Germany of their own importance to its pro- 
ductive power, and their right to a larger share 
of the rewards of labor, the privileges of life, 
and the administration of the government. 

With less than one-third of the population of 
the Empire now engaged in agriculture Ger- 
many is coming to depend more and more on 
other countries — Russia, Austria, America, 
and the Balkan provinces for its food supply. 
With an annual increase in population of 800,- 
000, the number of those whose bread must be 
purchased from other nations increases annu- 
ally by a million at least. One-fifth of her 
bread-stuffs are now imported. By 1925 one- 
half will be. Deficient in raw materials for her 



10 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

industrialism Germany must in large degree 
import the iron, copper, wool, and flax, and 
altogether the cotton and silk used in her 
manufactures. German industry, intelligence, 
inventiveness, and scientific and technical train- 
ing convert these into valuable products in the 
markets of the v^orld, and it is this difi^erence in 
values by which the nation profits and sustains 
itself. To assure cheap food and constant 
employment for the army of workers in its 
industrial hives it must, therefore, cultivate 
friendly relations with other nations. 

Every consideration of private and domestic 
welfare, of internal assimilation and develop- 
ment, and commercial expansion in other coun- 
tries, would seem to make a continuance of the 
present policy of peace imperative for Germany. 
It would be an evil hour for herself and for 
humanity if, goaded by short-sighted military 
leaders, or to bolster up feudal institutions and 
dynastic interests which no longer serve a use- 
ful purpose, or misled by competitive greed, or 
from a desire to distract by a foreign war the 
attention of her people from needed domestic 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 11 

reforms — Germany were to become disloyal to 
her ideals of peace and fraternity, and engage in 
what our late Secretary of State, John Hay, 
justly termed that "most ferocious and futile of 
human follies" — war. In their prompt and 
effective recognition of this truth the German 
Socialist deputies, who not long ago sent a 
telegram to the labor members of the British 
House of Commons pledging them their best 
efforts to avert the threatened increase of naval 
armaments by Germany, and to maintain a 
good understanding between the two countries, 
acted in a patriotic and statesmanlike manner, 
proving themselves loyal to the best interests of 
their country and their kind. 

In the light of this and similar action taken 
by the working-people of various countries, it 
would appear as if the final and decisive act 
which is to establish the world's peace may not 
proceed from governments, or parliaments, or 
world-congresses, however useful these may be, 
but from the plain people of the world, the 
working classes, so-called, who have the most 
to fear and suffer from war — all of whose 



12 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

higher and enduring interests are bound up 
with the continuance and permanence of inter- 
national justice and brotherhood. When this 
numerically predominant element in every nation 
comes to realize this fully and completely, it 
will put an end to overgrown military estab- 
lishments, which not only bring upon the 
laboring classes the evils of foreign aggression, 
but keep them in subjection and misery at 
home, and add enormously to their burdens 
and their toil. Universal Peace means the 
redemption of the toilers, the overthrow of 
tyranny in state and church, the establishment 
of juster standards of work and wages, the 
increase of social comforts and privileges, and 
that growing equality of social conditions which 
springs from the growth of the spirit of brother- 
hood among the nations and peoples of the earth. 
Thus far we have spoken of Germany, and 
its relations with the other nations of the earth. 
It remains to treat of the reciprocal sentiments 
and obligations which it may justly claim from 
its sister nations, and especially from the United 
States of America. 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 13 

Any adequate exposition of this matter must 
begin with the recognition that Americans are 
themselves very largely of German origin and 
descent. Without going back to the root- 
sources of our racial history, and striving to 
shov^^ that both Anglo- and German-Americans 
have, for the most part, a common Germanic or 
Teutonic ancestry, it is sufficient for our pur- 
pose to cite certain facts from the statistics of 
German immigration into this country w^hich 
disclose to w^hat an extent we are correlated as 
a people with our sister nation across the sea. 
Since the first settlement of this continent six 
million German immigrants have landed on our 
shores, and among all the varied racial elements 
of which our population is composed there is 
not one, except the original English stock, which 
has made so large and beneficent a contribution 
to our national welfare as the Germans. At 
first only a few individuals entered the American 
colonies from Germany, but presently they 
began to arrive in companies. William Penn, 
the greatest statesman of our earlier annals, 
went to Frankfurt on the Mayne and "there 



14 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

left the invitation that quickly filled his peace- 
ful and liberal province of Pennsylvania with 
the swarms of Teutons, which as early as then 
gave Benjamin Franklin fears of a German 
conquest of America." At the outbreak of the 
Revolutionary War Franklin estimated that 
100,000 Germans were in Pennsylvania. By 
the year 1775 there were 225,000 in the United 
States. The tide of immigration, avoiding 
Puritan New England, turned to the Carolinas, 
Maryland and Georgia. Even in New York 
the Dutch, a closely related branch of the Teu- 
tonic family, made a notable lodgement, and 
lent their name as a designation for all the 
German immigrants in the United States. In 
those early days there was among native-born 
Americans no nice discrimination of ethnologi- 
cal differences. All men and women of Teu- 
tonic stock were roughly grouped together, and 
denominated, with ill-concealed contempt, "the 
Dutch", a people concerning whom our school 
geographies informed us that they were hope- 
lessly obtuse and phlegmatic, and given over to 
beer-drinking, smoking, and other gross and 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 15 

sensuous pleasures. The writer well recalls 
that fifty years ago in Boston he was subjected 
to no little scorn and persecution by his play- 
mates because of his German, or as they termed 
it, his "Dutch" parentage. When, in the public 
streets, his mother would address her little son 
in her native tongue, he would clutch her gown 
and shamefacedly implore her not to speak 
in German and expose them to ridicule. But 
after Sadowa and Sedan it was another story, 
and every German-American child was proud to 
acknowledge his lineage, and declare that next 
to his birth amid the free institutions and glori- 
ous national ideals of the American republic, he 
prized most his descent from German parents, 
and his inheritance of the language, literature, 
science and art, the domestic virtues and im- 
pressive history — in a word, the spirit and 
genius of his German ancestry. 

The one million of Germans in this country 
at the beginning of the i8th century were re- 
inforced by millions more when, with the open- 
ing of the Great West, there began that great 
hegira to the vast and fertile regions beyond the 



16 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

AUeghanies and the Mississippi which redeemed 
their solitudes to the high uses of civiHzation, 
and afforded economic comfort, social oppor- 
tunity and political freedom to great multitudes 
of Europeans to whom the industrial and politi- 
cal conditions of their own countries had become 
intolerable. Among these vast hordes of immi- 
grants none were better equipped for this colon- 
izing task than the German settlers. Industri- 
ous, mild-mannered, frugal and thrifty, devoted 
to their family life, eager to obtain the best 
educational advantages for their children, simple 
in their pleasures, ardently devoted to political 
and spiritual freedom, it was to the German 
element in their population that the material 
prosperity, prevailing intelligence and sturdy 
civic virtues of our Western States, especially in 
great centers like Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cin- 
cinnati and Chicago, have been in large degree 
owing. It was the German-American vote 
which assured the first election of Abraham 
Lincoln, kept Missouri in the Union, and saved 
us from the worst effects of the free-silver craze. 
Always when the appeal has been made to its 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 17 

reason and conscience the German elements in 
our midst have nobly responded, ready with vote 
and treasure and lifeblood to uphold the insti- 
tutions and vindicate the ideals of their adopted 
country. They fought in our great wars, under 
the leadership of Herkimer and Muhlenberg, 
Steuben and De Kalb, of Sigel, Osterhaus and 
Schurz; they bore devoted testimony for human 
freedom on the prairies of Kansas and the wild- 
erness in Virginia. General Washington's body 
guard consisted of Pennsylvania Germans. The 
first continental troops to arrive for the relief of 
Boston were a German regiment from Penn- 
sylvania, which reached that city on the i8th 
of July, 1775, only 32 days after Congress had 
called the American colonists to arms. The 
first troops which the Southern colonists sent to 
the main army in New England were Germans 
from Virginia. They marched 600 miles in 54 
days over bad roads, and General Washington, 
when he beheld them marching well-armed and 
with soldierly bearing into his camp at Cam- 
bridge, sprang from his horse to grasp their 
hands, while tears of joy and gratitude filled 



18 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

his eyes. It was the bravery of the Pennsyl- 
vania Sharpshooters, a German regiment under 
the command of Col. John Peter Koechlin, 
v^hich caused the battle of Long Island to be 
called "The Thermopylae of the American 
Revolution." "These men," narrates an Ameri- 
can historian, "stood fast, and did not waver 
until 79 men out of one company were killed, 
and the rest of the army had completed its 
retreat. Long Island was the Thermopylae of 
the Revolution, and the Pennsylvania Germans 
were its Spartans." During our Civil War there 
were 200,000 Germans enrolled in the Union 
armies, a larger contingent than was furnished 
by any other foreign race in our midst. 

To consider only the material advantages 
which our country derived from this friendly 
invasion of Teutons, it may be affirmed that no 
other body of immigrants ever brought so much 
wealth into the American community or were in 
themselves such a source of enrichment to it. 
Friederich Kapp, an eminent authority on this 
subject, as the outcome of forty years of obser- 
vation and experience, estimated that each of 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 19 

these German immigrants brought with him to 
this country on an average, at least ^150. This 
computation was later confirmed by the United 
States Immigration Commissioners in New 
York. Multiply this sum of $1^0 by the 
millions of arrivals on American soil and the 
figures grow formidable. But the German 
emigrant not only brought a fortune into the 
country, he was a fortune in himself. His 
muscle and brain power, his sobriety, industry 
and thrift, estimated by economic standards, 
were computed by Kapp to be worth from 800 
to 1300 dollars per capita. The nearly two 
million and a half of Germans who came to this 
country during the fifty-two years between 18 19 
and 1 87 1 represented a money value of at least 
2250 millions of dollars. These immigrants 
from Germany belonged almost entirely to the 
middle-class of society; that is, they represented 
its best working elements. Already in 1607 
the aristocracy of Virginia imported German 
craftsmen to fashion their agricultural imple- 
ments and make their glass. U. S. Census 
reports, which we cannot here quote in detail, 



20 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

show that of all the immigrants from foreign 
countries the Germans were the best skilled in 
trades and handicrafts. The first iron and 
glass produced in this country were made by 
Germans. 

As agriculturists they were even more remark- 
able. In every industry dealing with the ex- 
ploitation of the soil, in farming, fruit and viti- 
culture, forestry, sheep and cattle-raising and 
dairy products, the German settlers were fore- 
most, and rendered immense service in the 
development of the material resources of their 
new home. Such has been the material con- 
tribution made by our sister nation across the 
sea to the settlement of our country and its 
growth and development in good citizenship. 

Those eminent students of German life in 
America, Profs. Julius Goebel and A. B. Faust, 
practically agree that in the year 1900 there 
were between seven and eight million persons in 
the United States of German parentage. Prof. 
Faust makes the conservative estimate that 
between 18 and 19 millions, or about 27% of 
the total white population of our country is of 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 21 

German descent, as compared with 20^ millions 
derived from purely English stocks, and 14 
millions from Scotch-Irish races. One person 
in every four among us is thus descended in 
whole or in part from German ancestors. 

Mr. Bryce, in his admirable treatise on our 
American Republic, is inclined to under-rate 
the German element in our population because 
it has not produced more really great names, 
not over half a dozen in two centuries. It is 
possible, however, that to have contributed to 
America's development so many generations of 
agricultural toilers, skilful artisans, devoted 
home-builders, and loyal citizens may outweigh a 
score of geniuses and great men. 

The number of highly-educated Germans — 
university professors, teachers, lawyers, doctors, 
artists and the like — who emigrated to this 
country has been comparatively small. It 
reached its maximum during the years preced- 
ing and following the political agitation of 1848 
in Germany. To the cultivated Germans the 
United States, had, until recently, little induce- 
ment to offer. The vast majority who came 



22 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

to this country were plain people actuated by 
a desire to improve their personal condition, 
enjoy a larger political and religious freedom, 
and save themselves and their children from a 
detested military service. 

Yet we may not forget in this review the intel- 
lectual and moral impulses our country has 
received from its German immigrants, the 
important service rendered by great merchants 
like Jacob Astor, Anthony Drexel and August 
Belmont; by captains of industry such as the 
bridge-builder Roebling, who swung the great 
Brooklyn Bridge across the East River, and 
spanned the gorge at Niagara with tenuous 
filaments of wire; by Werner, founder of the 
great printing establishment at Akron, Ohio, 
second in size only to that maintained by the 
national government at Washington; Henry 
Villard, builder of railroads and upbuilder of 
commonwealths; Spreckles, sugar king of Hawaii 
and California; Lux and Miller, cattle and land 
magnates of the Pacific Coast; Weyerhauser, the 
largest owner of timber land in the United States; 
Sutro, who built the tunnel which made the fabu- 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 28 

lous wealth of the Comstock Lode accessible; 
Frick and Schwab, Carnegie's trusted Heuten- 
ants in the steel industry; Steinmetz, Edison's 
co-worker and peer in invention; Studebaker, 
whose establishment turns out 100,000 vehicles 
annually, including 10,000 automobiles; Heinz, 
with his 57 varieties dear to the housewife's 
heart; the great German Breweries, employing 
thousands of men; Schumacher, pioneer in the 
oatmeal industry; Boldt, builder and host of the 
Waldorf-Astoria and Bellevue-Stratford Hotels; 
Weber, Knabe and Steinway, representing an 
army of Germans employed in the manufacture 
of pianos; Brill, of the electrical works bearing 
his name. Such are a few only of the German 
immigrants whose inventive and administrative 
genius has enriched American Life. Dr. Klo- 
psch, editor and proprietor of the Christian 
Herald, by his appeals brought in a return of 
2^ million dollars for international charity. 
Henry Bergh, in New York, was the eloquent 
voice for dumb animals and wrought miracles 
of mercy. James Lick, a German innkeeper of 
San Francisco, gave away millions for human- 



24 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

itarian causes, and reared the great telescope 
on Mt. Hamilton that bears his name and at 
whose foot he lies buried. In like manner other 
Germans among us have given great sums for 
education and charity. 

Still more noteworthy are the intellectual and 
moral treasures with which our German fellow- 
citizens have enriched the American community. 
Jacob Leisler, second governor of New York, 
called together in 1670 the first Continental 
Congress for mutual conference and co-opera- 
tion between the American colonies, and died an 
early martyr for the great principles of self- 
government and good citizenship. The first 
public protest against slavery was framed in 
1688 by German Quakers in Pennsylvania. 
Jacob Sauer, in 1743, printed at Germantown, 
Pa., the first Bible which appeared on this con- 
tinent in a European tongue, John Eliot's earlier 
version having been in an Indian dialect. 
2,000 diflTerent German works were printed in 
the United States during the i8th century. 
Francis Lieber safely guided our national 
government during the great civil war through 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 25 

the shoals and quicksands of international law; 
Commodore Hassler in the Geodetic survey and 
Fernow in the Forestry Department laid the 
foundation for the conservation efforts of today. 
A long list of educators — scientific, philosophi- 
cal, religious — from Carl Follen, Agassiz, and 
Beck of an earlier generation to Hilgard, Mun- 
sterberg, Von Hoist, Francke, Jagemann and 
Goebel in our own day, have wrought mightily 
for the intellectual uplift of the nation. Emi- 
nent physicians like Wister, Pulte, Roelker and 
Wesselhoeft; artists like Leutze, Bierstadt, 
Mosler, Carl Marr, Toby Rosenthal, Diehlman 
and Reinhart, and popularizers of art like Louis 
Prang, were prophets of the ideal among us. 
The Dome of the Capitol at Washington, the 
U. S. Treasury Building and the superb Con- 
gressional Library, the Waldorf-Astoria in New 
York and the huge passenger station in St. Louis 
are among the edifices designed by German 
architects and adorned by German artists. 

Among the public men whose efforts have 
been conspicuously devoted to promote the cause 
of international peace and amity none are better 



26 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

worthy of commemoration than the late Freder- 
ick W. Holls, Secretary of the American dele- 
gation to the Hague Peace Conference, and one 
of its leading spirits, and Congressman Richard 
Bartholdt, President of the Interparliamentary 
Union. It is interesting to note that in Presi- 
dent Taft's Cabinet three of the Secretaries, G. 
von Meyer, Charles Nagel and R. A. Ballinger, 
are of German descent. 

But it is the art of music in America to which 
they have made the most important contribu- 
tion. The names of Carl Bergman, Theodore 
Thomas, Carl Zerrahn, Anschutz, Damrosch 
and Kneisel, Seidl and Sousa, among orchestral 
conductors, may just be cited with those of great 
histrionic artists like Henrietta Sonntag, Ma- 
terna, Lucca, Gerster, Gadski and Schuman- 
Heink. 

Last of all to be named, because the greatest 
of the sons of Germany in our midst, is Carl 
Schurz, whose intellectual abilities, personal 
character and public services remain one of the 
most inspiring traditions of our American na- 
tional life — the thinker, student, and author. 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 27 

the patriot and soldier, the ideaHst in poHtics, 
the eloquent apostle of human rights and the 
universal brotherhood of man. 

In estimating; the intellectual and moral con- 
tribution made by the German immigrant to his 
adopted country we must bear in mind the tre- 
mendous disadvantages under which he labored 
in a strange land, amid unfamiliar political and 
social institutions, and the difficulties of a 
foreign tongue. These initial trials were of 
themselves exhausting to body and mind. But 
to them were added the fierce struggle for exis- 
tence in new communities, or in the profound 
isolation of the primitive wilderness, which left 
him little strength for the higher pursuits of 
human existence, or even the exercise of his 
political rights and duties. Above all, his un- 
familiarity with the English language was a 
serious handicap. Few, very few, have been 
able, notwithstanding their years of residence in 
this country, to acquire such a mastery of its 
accent and idioms as every American-born 
child possesses. What consideration could they 
hope for, to what influence could they attain in 



28 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

the social and political world when their broken 
and blundering speech exposed them to mis- 
judgment and ridicule ? 

How many, too, found their education, though 
obtained in the best schools in Europe, of little 
avail to them in the cruder professional and 
social life of the land of the reaper and cotton- 
gin, and the Almighty Dollar! If the story of 
the physical deprivations, mental anguish, and 
worldly disappointment and failure of many of 
the most cultivated of these immigrants could be 
adequately told, it would form one of the most 
pathetic and moving chapters in the history of 
the occupation of America. 

Yet, despite all these disadvantages, what 
other foreign race has made a larger contribution 
to the higher interests of our American Repub- 
lic ? If the Germans among us have not always 
displayed the energy, self-reliance and self- 
restraint which characterize the American type 
of manhood, they have been happily free from 
the restlessness and recklessness which too often 
accompany and mar these qualities. The 
German, with centuries of civilization behind 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 29 

him in his native land, brought to this country 
very desirable elements of stability, social cul- 
ture and artistic tastes with v^hich to counter- 
balance our national impatience and excessive 
devotion to the material interests of life. 

Von Hoist, an eminent German-American 
writer on political and social questions, holds 
that in two other ways the German immigration 
has helped American society. 

First, by its genial example it mitigated the 
severity of the Puritan Sabbath, and brought 
about a more rational and liberal observance of 
the day. This we admit, and yet, as one who 
in his earlier days knew something of the bleak- 
ness and rigor of a New England Sunday, the 
writer does not hesitate to declare that as com- 
pared with the present headlong tendency to 
convert our day of rest, meditation and domestic 
felicity into a mere opportunity for pleasures 
and dissipations of a lower order, exhausting to 
both body and mind, the staid and religious 
Sabbath of the Puritan and Quaker was more 
elevating, more refining, and better for the 
physical health and moral uplift of our people 



30 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

than the ever-increasing Hcense and frivolity 
of the American Sunday as we behold it today. 
Again, Von Hoist thinks that for bringing 
about the substitution of beer-drinking for the 
former use of more ardent spirituous liquors, 
the German settlers among us deserve the 
gratitude of the American people. In this also 
there is truth. Yet that substitution has not 
been altogether a blessing, since it has led 
multitudes of Americans who were quite free 
from the drink-habit to the use of beer as a 
beverage, to the injury both of their health and 
their pocket. No one has more eloquently 
denounced this beer-drinking habit than the 
Germans themselves. Thus Martin Luther 
said: "Our country has its devil. Our German 
devil is a good wine-skin.'' "The man who in- 
vented beer-brewing was a pest to Germany — 
I have prayed God that he might destroy the 
whole beer-brewing industry." His fellow re- 
former Melancthon wrote: "We Germans are 
swilling ourselves to poverty, are swilling our- 
selves to hell." In our day the witnesses in- 
crease against this national evil. Said Bis- 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 31 

marck: "If it were possible to extend the field 
of legislation so that protection could be aflForded 
the workmen against the demon of drink — 
this Diabolus Germanicus — a large portion of 
the social question would be solved." Kaiser 
William II has repeatedly borne similar testi- 
mony. The voice of the German University 
teacher also is uplifted against this canker that 
is eating out the marrow of the German people. 
Indeed, the scientific arguments against the use 
of alcohol as a beverage are now largely derived 
from German chemists and physicians. When 
the late Professor Otto Pfleiderer returned to 
his native country from his last American visit 
he made an address to the student body in 
Berlin in the course of which he is reported to 
have said that if Germany was ever distanced 
in the race for industrial and commercial su- 
premacy by its great rivals Japan and the 
United States, it would be because of the great 
abstemiousness of these nations in the matter 
of alcoholic drink. Whatever may have been 
the case in the past, it is not now the Americans 
who have to learn from their German fellow- 



32 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

citizens how to drink; it is the Germans who 
must learn from the abstemious Americans how 
not to drink. The comparatively temperate 
habits of the people of the United States do not 
arise, in the main, from the use of milder bever- 
ages, but from the self-restraint and self-denial 
of the American citizen, and his increasing pre- 
occupation with higher intellectual and ethical 
interests. The gospel needed for today is not 
"personal liberty," which is too often a mere 
sophistry, but observance of the law, obedience 
to the will of the majority, and consideration 
for the welfare of the community as a whole — 
the foundation principles of our republican 
institutions. It would be well for the Germans 
in this country if they realized more keenly how 
their mistaken identification of "personal lib- 
erty" with the unlimited gratification of a mere 
animal appetite lessens the esteem in which they 
are held by their American fellow citizens, makes 
them the allies and victims of unscrupulous 
manufacturers and vendors of alcoholic stimu- 
lants, and greatly decreases their influence for 
good in the American community. There are 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 33 

encouraging signs that the German element 
among us is beginning to appreciate this, and 
to take higher ground in the discussion and 
settlement of this question. 

In other departments of American life the 
influence of German ideas and German senti- 
ments has been less equivocally exerted. How 
beautiful is German home and family life, with 
its strong sense of duty, its tender affections, its 
simple pleasures, its charming hospitalities, its 
love of art and song. If the Germans among 
us had done nothing else than to establish in 
our homes the delightful Christmas festival, 
which the Puritan commonwealth looked upon 
with suspicion as a popish observance, it would 
deserve our unstinted gratitude. How cheerless 
was Christmas Day fifty years ago in New 
England! My father, when shortly after his 
arrival Christmas Eve approached, hid a hatchet 
under his coat, and, at nightfall went out into 
what were then the wilds of Roxbury, cut down 
a little pine tree, and bore it joyously home to 
his young wife. Together they trimmed it with 
lights and spangles, and when the holy hour 



34 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

drew near they stood with clasped hands and 
streaming eyes before their Httle Christmas tree, 
two lonely exiles and strangers in Puritan Bos- 
ton, keeping in spiritual sympathy with their 
kindred in the far-off Fatherland, the sacred 
festival of their race and their religion. 

But in our day all this has changed, and every 
home, of whatever race or worship, knows the 
joy of the German Christmas. 

We should bear in mind, too, what German 
art and German music have done for the enjoy- 
ment and culture of the American people. The 
home songs and chamber music of the old world 
transplanted to the new, have made glad the 
hearts and brought harmony into the councils 
of many an American family. The German 
choral societies, great and small, with their 
annual festivals of song and cheer, have given 
us a new understanding of true social enjoy- 
ment, and higher standards of musical expres- 
sion. If some day in America the trumpery 
ballads of the vaudeville and revival-meeting 
are displaced by a better, healthier song, it will 
be the German Folk-song and the German 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 35 

Chorale from which the nobler impulse will 
have come. In our public schools this has 
already happened, and on this broad basis of 
popular instruction we are rearing the temple 
of our national music. 

Every great city in the American Union now 
has its chamber concerts, its symphony orches- 
tra, its German Opera, and it is to the musi- 
cianly gifts of the Teutonic element among us 
that this auspicious feature of American culture 
is chiefly due. German composers, leaders and 
musicians have made it possible. We still send 
our most talented youth to Germany to com- 
plete their artistic education. For a long time 
to come that country will continue to lead the 
world in the production of musical masterpieces 
and in great artists to interpret them to us. 

Consider, also, the vast obligations Ameri- 
cans are under to Germany in the matter of 
education and science. Fifty years ago Horace 
Mann remodelled the public schools of New 
England after the type of those in Prussia. The 
kinder-garten in this country is another product 
of German intelligence and sympathy with child- 



36 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

hood. Our great American universities are, 
one by one, breaking away from their semi- 
monastic prototypes in England, and adopting 
the German methods of instruction and dis- 
cipline. Thousands of American students have 
received their higher education at German 
universities and returned to this country laden 
with the spoils of German learning, literature 
and science to become in turn disseminators of 
light to their countrymen. Prof. A. B. Faust, 
in his book on "The German Element in the 
United States," gives a list of the Americans who 
from 1 8 15 to 1850 were students at Goettingen, 
Leipzig, Halle, Berlin and other German uni- 
versities. Among them were George Ticknor, 
Edward Everett, George Bancroft, R. W. Emer- 
son, H. W. Longfellow, J. L. Motley, F. C. 
Child, E. T. Harris, G. M. Lane, W. D. Whit- 
ney, Th. D. Woolsey, G. L. Prentiss, F. H. 
Hedge, B. A. Gould, George W. Curtis and 
Timothy Dwight. Of 225 such students 137 
became professors at American colleges and 
disseminators of German learning and love of 
study. More recently still an exchange of pro- 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 37 

fessors between German and American univer- 
sities is taking place, from which we may expect 
the most important results, not only in scholar- 
ship but in promoting a good understanding 
between these two great nations. 

Space would fail to enumerate all the benefits 
which have flowed, which are increasingly flow- 
ing to America from the Germanic genius in 
both theoretical and applied science, in medi- 
cine, in the plastic arts, in industrial organiza- 
tion and civic administration, in historical and 
biblical criticism, in philosophical and theologi- 
cal speculation, — imparted directly by teachers, 
or imbibed from German scientific and literary 
works. 

The profoundly religious spirit of the German 
people has been notably displayed in their con- 
tribution to the moral uplift of the New World. 
The first immigrants, in the i8th century, were 
animated in great part by religious motives and 
desire for freedom in their worship. They 
founded in their new home religious commun- 
ities whose virtues of family life, democratic and 
brotherly spirit and unaflTected piety have re- 



38 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

mained a precious legacy to succeeding genera- 
tions. 

From Germany, again, have come those 
emancipating ideas and ethical impulses which 
have profoundly affected American religious 
opinions, and compelled a re-interpretation of 
Christianity in the light of modern knowledge 
and needs. The Transcendental movement in 
this country, fifty and more years ago, was the 
child of German rationalism allied with the 
German conscience. Its discussion would de- 
mand a whole essay or volume. Lessing, Kant, 
Schleiermacher, Fichte, Jacobi and Hegel were 
its spiritual progenitors. Their thought and 
piety, directly or indirectly, influenced the pro- 
phets of New England Idealism, R. W. Emer- 
son, Channing, Theodore Parker, Hedge and 
others, and became the point of departure for a 
new proclamation of religious freedom and life. 
More recently still the exhaustive scholarship of 
Germany has led to the creation of the historic- 
critical school of theology, whose great repre- 
sentatives — Baur, Strauss, DeWette, Haus- 
rath,"'Holtzman, Pfleiderer, and the rest, have 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 39 

created for us a new Bible, and a Christianity 
viewed in the Hght of the other rehgions and 
Scriptures of the world. As Pres. Andrew D. 
White tells us: "Hardly is there a movement in 
the higher intellect and life in America that has 
not been drunk in from German influences." 

We have traced at some length the influence 
of Germany upon this country, an influence 
vastly advantageous and beneficent. What we 
have done in return for Germany is less appre- 
ciable, though much might be said on this 
aspect of the matter. There is one return we 
can make to our sister nation, however, and 
that is to recognize our manifold obligations to 
her in the past, and the advantage to both coun- 
tries of an unbroken continuance of the peace- 
ful and friendly relation we have borne towards 
one another throughout American history. "No 
other nation is so just to foreign talent and 
performance as Germany. She honors foreign 
heroes; she studies foreign literature; she treas- 
ures foreign records." An equal appreciation 
for our cousins-German should be character- 
istic of American life. 



40 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

We shall need to cultivate this brotherly 
spirit the more because, day by day, Germany 
is becoming more and more our formidable rival 
in the markets of the world. Competitive greed 
on the part of both nations, incidental outbursts 
of national hysteria, and the danger arising from 
overgrov^n military and naval armaments, may 
easily lead to friction and belligerency between 
them. But, surely, a more insane and disas- 
trous folly than war betv/een these two great 
powers, whose genius and mission to the world 
are so similar, and who have so many interests 
in common, cannot be imagined. One great 
guarantee of international amity is the presence 
of the German element in this country, whose 
influence, let us hope, will ever be strongly used 
to perpetuate peace and goodwill between the 
two peoples. 

Thus far we have treated of American rela- 
tions with the German nation across the sea. 
What should be the spirit and temper of our 
American-born and German-born citizens to- 
wards each other .? It ought, surely, to be one 
of increasing respect, confidence and goodwill! 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 41 

That way only lie honor, safety and peace. 
Thus alone can we fulfil the reconciling mis- 
sion to which as a nation we are called, and 
be true to the lessons of our racial history. 

Fifteen hundred years ago, on the shores of 
the North Sea, the Germanic tribes, dividing 
themselves into two great families, separated 
from each other. The one branch, crossing the 
silver streak of the British Channel, undertook 
the conquest of the group of islands known as 
Britain. Measurably preserved by their isola- 
tion from the aggression and rapacity of hostile 
neighbors, they worked out for themselves an 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, in accordance with 
their inborn genius for freedom and self-govern- 
ment. Through struggles and tears and blood- 
shed they grew to be a mighty nation, the mis- 
tress of the seas, the conquerors and colonizers 
of a world. Their sons, twelve centuries later, 
crossing the Atlantic, founded in this western 
hemisphere a new realm, pledged to liberty, 
fraternity and progress. 

The other branch of the original Teutonic 
family remained in the land of their fathers and 



42 AMERICA AND GERMANY 

faced a destiny of struggle, trial and suffering. 
Entering into the sad inheritance of the deca- 
dent Greek and Roman civilization, they were 
for centuries misled by the dream of a Holy 
Roman Empire under the sway of Germanic 
princes, and made the tool of the ultramontane 
politics of the Roman See. Discovering at 
length the folly and futility of these ambitions, 
they withdrew to their own soil, there to develop 
out of their racial consciousness and needs the 
institutions of Germanic civilization, to bestow 
upon the modern world the treasures of their 
religion, philosophy, art and science, and to 
become at last the mighty nation which greets 
us in the Germany of today. 

Here, in this new world, the two branches — 
the Anglo-Saxon and the Germanic — after 
long separation and estrangement have reunited 
and form once more a single nation. Their 
reunion is one of the most significant and im- 
portant events in the modern history of man- 
kind.* Henceforth their destiny is one and 



* Judge John B Stallo: Address at the Saengerfest, Sept. 
8, 1867, at IndianapoHs 



THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS 43 

inseparable. Brought together by Providential 
ordering, uniting their various gifts and capa- 
cities for mutal and combined service, with a 
common aim, loyalty and endeavor, may they 
go on together in their world-mission — to build 
upon this Western Continent a state pledged to 
righteousness, justice and progress, a reconciling 
influence among the nations, a fulfilment of the 
ancient Scripture: 

"Peace on the earth; good-will among men." 



